Radiant
by octocelot
Summary: They saw the sun. /7 drabbles, written one a day, for Caesar's Palace's second ship week
1. Day 1

The sun is not shining.

No, it is glowing with a powerful radiance that melts yellow into white in a way that would give a light bulb wet dreams. And it is this little star that harshly illuminates the ocean, making the water look like it is covered in diamonds.

It is here, with his feet nested in the sand, that Finnick the child finds it most wonderful to dream.

He looks to his left, and he sees a budding beauty, still too young to be called anything more than pretty. Two of her fingers are absentmindedly twirling a broken shell. He doesn't bother to tell her to be careful; she wouldn't listen to him. Her hair grows long and the sand climbs up the bottom of each strand, and the mesh of colors reminds him of the expensive coffee his father is allowed to drink on the morning of his birthday each year.

To his right is a large rock the size of a small hill. He runs his fingers across it and he imagines all of the crabs who might have scuttled across the very place, and how many barnacles had made their home on this very big world of a rock of theirs, and how many lovebirds have lain on top of the other of their pair, taking part in this huge miracle.

"C'mon, it's time for the reaping," Annie whispers. She pulls him off the sand.


	2. Day 2

His eyelids roll back lazily.

He had a good dream last night. He won't tell anybody what he dreamt of, but he hopes it will become a reality. He has already planned out the way he is going to kill her, but his fantasies lie in what he wants to take before he takes her life.

It is still dawn, and the oversized lightbulb is just beginning to start its way across the dome's ceiling. His eyes flit to the tree. Yes, she's still trapped there. If it weren't for the protection he needed against the brute from 11, he's kill all of his allies in their sleep and make it a showdown between him and the girl he so desperately wanted to set on fire.

He can spare a few more minutes, he thinks. He drifts back to sleep with a smile that turns his lips up only at the very edge of their corners.


	3. Day 3

He wrenches open his eyes as soon as his mind drifts from deep sleep into semi-consciousness.

With a grunt, he lifts his weary body out of the sinking mattress. He rubs his eyes and groans with regret; his head is aching and the light shining throught the windows are really not helping. Seeing Katniss, who he thought had a chance at one of his only Victors, already being targeted by the gamemakers had made him angrier than he had thought it would.

He stumbles over to the closest window and pulls the curtains together. He feels a little better now that he's in complete darkness. On his way to the bathroom to re-hydrate himself, he absentmindedly stepped on his shoes.

They weren't usually there.

He looked to the floor and saw that they were neatly placed at the foot of his bed.


	4. Day 4

It is a warm afternoon, and Beetee is hiding from the heat at the bottom of a tree.

He looks at the sun through the trees and traces the veins of the leaves with his eyes. He is a quiet kid, and if Miss Nebula hadn't recommended to move him up a grade because of his inquisitiveness and inability to get along with the younger children, he would have stayed in the caterpillar group.

He doesn't know how to tell time yet, but he glances at the watch around his wrist. He sighs a little sigh; the hands on the watch haven't moved since he got it. He is hungry and hopes that lunch is soon.

He squints at the sun again; his father told him that the sun was in the middle of the sky at noon. As he is puzzling over where the middle of the sky is, his nose begins to twitch. In just a fraction of a second, suddenly a strange goo is hanging from his nose and attaching to his lips.

Before he can decide what to do about this dilemma, or eat this strangely warm substance, he hears a voice. "Hey!"

Quickly he rubs his face into the grass and turns away from the noise.

"Hey!" This time, it is louder. "Your nose was like, like, like a pee pee when you sneezed!"

Beetee stifles a giggle behind his hand (his mother had always told him to say Number One).

"What's your name?" the person asks.

After licking the rest off his lips and inhaling sharply to make sure there isn't anything on his face anymore, Beetee turns towards the other child. "Beetee," he whispers shyly.

"I'm Wiress. Can we be friends?"


	5. Day 5

They are two bitter girls.

Both have been brought up by the sun and the earth, starting from humble beginnings and becoming the prized but worthless alone fruits of their supporting parent.

One is an olive who had its pit drilled out of it, plucked from her mother prematurely and sent to be processed in metal machines. She is fragile and she is more afraid of anything that someone will choose her and then bite down on her. The bottle she lives in has been on the shelf too long; she has seen too many things, and she has been soaking in sour oils for too long.

The other is the pit spit out after chewing away the flesh. She has been unwanted, sometimes even discarded, but as mundane as she is, she holds certain powers. The power of new life is dormant inside of her, waiting for the right conditions to come along to spark the event that will eventually mother a nation. If she cannot do that, then, she doesn't mind getting lodged in your windpipe.

And the two fit together well.

They are both much more fitted to poor soil than the rich, and all they need is a little sunlight.

* * *

**A/N: That was supposed to be Johanna/Katniss.**


	6. Day 6

Cinna is young, only twenty three.

His talent had made him stand out enough for the elderly costume designer for One to pluck him from the crowd and carry him into the headquarters of the fashion industry. The apprentice and master are sitting in a beautiful high-ceilinged room with more window than wall, but the subject of their attention is the girl in the room with them.

She is classically gorgeous, Cinna decides. Watching her stoic face while his master circles her, staring at a possible dress for interview, he feels a shiver go through him. He's not sure what it is.

This tribute is eighteen, she volunteered, and she is strong while maintaining a decent amount of feminine curves. Her hair falls in ringlets to her collarbone, and he from the way his master is eyeing her widow's peak, Cinna can tell that he will take advantage of the way the light bounces off the different angles in her hair.

Cinna can't tell if the excitement he feels the night before each session with her (her name is Sapphire) is because that this is his first project or if he just likes staring at the curve of her jaw. He begins to draw her in the evenings when he has nothing better to do, and these drawings slowly turn more personal with each stroke of his pencil.

Her interview goes wonderfully; she is charismatic as well, another one of the well-rounded careers. Likewise, her games go wonderfully until the Gamemakers cause a drought in the Arena. It's the second week of the games, and she doesn't have any supplies from the Cornucopia anymore. Suddenly, the sound of his pulse begins to fill his ears.

Hastily, he shuffles through his drawings and finds his best one. Her face is illuminated by the sunlight and her eyes live up to her namesake in this drawing. He clumsily adds a few birds and background with a stream. And then gathering his every spare penny, he sends his drawing to the parachute taking station.

_This should cheer her up. After all, what point is there to life without happiness?_

He is watching when his parachute falls from this sky. Cinna sees her face brighten, her eyes widen, her sunken cheeks seemingly color a little.

When she opens up the parachute and pulls out the parchment, she begins to scream.


	7. Day 7

"I have never loved anybody before.

"And there is no reason to assume that this is love, because while I'm not sure what love does mean, I know full well what it doesn't, and this is not it.

"But, you make me so happy. I can't explain it. I constantly feel like I've just drowned another shot of vodka. Warm. Drunk. I'm close to tears; I can't find the syllables to express it, but if I tried describing the feeling to anybody with a partner, they'd understand. I hope you understand it.

"I want to impress you so much. It's nerve wracking. I don't want you to ever get tired of me and leave. Please don't ever leave me. I couldn't deal with it. I'm selfish. I'm sorry. I would do terrible things you, even if you didn't want me to. I'm obsessed.

"My legs tremble when I'm near you. You can't tell, but they are. I can feel it. I keep looking forward to our next conversation, your next smile, your laugh. I try to make jokes even though I'm not funny, and you laugh anyway, and I believe you. I want to believe you.

"Before, I didn't respect men who baby their partners, men who buy their lady anything she wants, men who hold doors open for them, men who kiss the ground that she walks on. But this is the first time I've felt like this. It's self-degrading. It makes me feel worthless, angry at myself. I'm obsessed. I said it. I'm obsessed.

"But you look at me and it's suddenly okay, because you'll pull me up from my knees.

"When I wake every morning, you are right beside me, and I imagine you smiling at a child with your eyes and my chin, teaching the little you how to say "three", teaching her how to make paper flowers.

"I imagine standing at an alter with you across me, and when I see the sight of you in a white dress coming to me because you want to be my best friend forever and you want me to be your best friend forever, I cry. I am crying.

"I imagine that you are wrinkled and white and you are still holding my hand during the scary parts during the movies, and I imagine that your laugh still rings with the clarity of youth and you are still inspiring me to do great things.

"And I want you to be the mother to my children, my wife, my princess. I would have you been my queen. You are already my goddess.

"When you lay beneath me last night in a state only I am allowed to see, I relished your unraveling...and it struck me suddenly. It struck me that you and I were all part of this bigger thing. This endless circle. That we transcended two individuals rocking back and forth on a mattress and that we were taking part in a beautiful ritual that began billions of years ago, back to when the first bacterium reproduced, and that it would continue until this world explodes. I felt the strings inside me stretch like angel hair pasta and expand and go on for eternity and then it all came back to me in one single _shwoop_, and I was just myself again, and you were just you.

"Only you can have made me feel this connectedness.

"You always sit on the porch in the afternoon, and you tell me that you're soaking in the sun like a plant. With your head rocked back and your closed eyes facing the sky, I wonder what you are seeing underneath your eyelids.

"They said to never stare at the sun, for you may blind yourself. I am seeing one."

One morning, before he turns bitter, a young President Snow keeps a journal to pour his thoughts out into a cup that won't tell anybody, expelling the words from his lungs with force, as his pen messily swirls across the page.

There's a reason why he is attached to roses, now. Just like all living things, they wilt and crumble to dirt.


End file.
